Jharu – Free Open-Source Disk Cleaner for Developers

Jharu addresses a specific pain point for developers and machine learning engineers: disk space consumed by tools that leave large, opaque caches. Generic disk cleaners show folder sizes but do not understand what that data is; Jharu ships a curated knowledge base of 25+ cache locations across ML frameworks (Hugging Face, Ollama, PyTorch, Whisper, LM Studio, Keras), package managers (npm, pip, conda, uv, Cargo, Maven, Gradle, NuGet, Go), containers (Docker), IDEs (JetBrains), and build tools (Xcode). A distinctive feature is its ability to distinguish ML models that have been loaded from models downloaded and never used—allowing developers to reclaim storage without breaking active workflows. The app's safety model is conservative: every deletion moves to the system Trash (never permanent), every item carries a safety rating and staleness detection, and locations Jharu cannot read are reported rather than hidden. The developer positions Jharu as a direct alternative to CleanMyMac (paid, macOS-only, lacks ML model understanding) and CCleaner (freemium, no developer-specific intelligence). The current limitation is that Jharu lacks code signing on both platforms—users see security warnings on first launch—and the developer is explicitly seeking sponsorships to cover Apple notarization ($99/year) and Windows code signing costs (~$100–400/year). The roadmap includes orphaned-data detection, duplicate-file detection, and localization into Bengali and Hindi.